


of kitten cams, trauma, and not talking about it for a while

by thenewbacklog



Series: TMA Hurt/Comfort Week [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, Depression (referenced), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning (referenced), Hurt/Comfort, Self-Worth Issues, Trauma, canon-typical lack of communication, references to daisy kidnapping jon in s3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:29:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27148748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenewbacklog/pseuds/thenewbacklog
Summary: Kitten cams can’t fix everything, but after the week they’ve both had, they’ll take anything they can get.Or: Jon and Georgie watch a kitten cam after the week from hell.
Relationships: Georgie Barker & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: TMA Hurt/Comfort Week [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1894885
Comments: 8
Kudos: 64





	of kitten cams, trauma, and not talking about it for a while

**Author's Note:**

> Planned to post this during H/C Week back in August, but life happened and I had to put it aside for a while. At this point, it's as done as it'll ever be.
> 
> Prompt is Calm. Jon is, as usual, an unreliable narrator when it comes to whether he deserves love.

Jon woke slowly, in bits and pieces, until he was finally awake long enough to decide he didn’t want to sleep anymore. He curled into the pillow, then went limp, somehow more exhausted than before. He felt exposed, alone in the dark room. Too vulnerable, like a pinned insect, like someone was watching, and at any moment they might-

A chair scraped against the kitchen floor, and someone sighed.

 _There was someone in the kitchen_.

He tensed and clenched his fists, holding back a pained grunt when the motion crushed the burn on his right hand. His heart started to race, and his breaths got tighter. He felt sick, what had he been _thinking_ , coming back to Georgie’s after everything that happened this week? He took a slow breath, sat up, and inched across the mattress toward the sound. It might be too late for him, but maybe he could keep whoever this was (Detective Tonner, back now that he’s alone? Someone like Jude Perry or Michael or, god forbid, Prentiss, someone who’d heard about the Archivist and wanted to try their hand?) away from-

The voice in the kitchen laughed, and Jon sagged a little, twisting his hands together in front of him. Georgie. It was only Georgie, it was Georgie and she was laughing at something the Admiral did, or a video, or a meme, but she was okay, she was _safe_ , and so was he. Whatever passed for safe now, anyway.

He levered himself off the mattress, and made his way painfully into the kitchen, leaning on the wall for support with his good hand and trying to ignore the dull sting from the blisters. Archival work really didn’t prepare you to dig a grave at gunpoint.

The lights were on, when he got there. Georgie sat at the table with her laptop, her back to the doorway. Jon couldn’t hear what she was watching, but as he got closer, he could see… oh. A kitten cam.

One of _those_ nights, then.

Jon lingered for long enough that Georgie noticed someone watching her and twisted around, propping an elbow on the back of the chair to keep herself in place. They locked eyes for a moment. Georgie took her headphones off and smiled, all exasperation and worry and friendship he didn’t deserve.

“Morning.”

Jon smiled back, almost wincing. “It’s… what time is it?” He fumbled in his pocket for his phone, grumbling a little when his hand got stuck.

“Not that late. There’s some leftovers if you want any.”

“No- no it’s... are you okay?”

Georgie raised her eyebrows as if to say that maybe, perhaps, Jon wasn't the one who should be asking that question. Jon gestured at the laptop, and Georgie smiled tiredly, like she'd been caught out.

“Look, we’ve both had a long day, and I don't think either of us wants to talk about it yet. I think this calls for kittens.”

Jon nodded hesitantly, and, when Georgie got up and took the laptop with her, trailed after her to the living room. He hung back, shoulders hunched, trying to make himself as small as possible.

Georgie threw herself onto the sofa and set the laptop on the table in front of her, then looked at Jon expectantly until he took the last few steps over and eased himself down on the far end, leaving a little space between them and wincing as the motion jarred bruised skin and sore muscles.

Jon tensed as he felt an impact on the cushion next to him, then another behind his head. A warm, furry weight settled into place, leaned heavily against the back of Jon’s head, and started to purr. He smiled a little and reached up to pet the Admiral with his good hand, trying to focus on the sound. His eyes started to slip half-closed the longer they sat together.

After a while, when the black and white kitten on the stream was asleep on top of the cat tree and the orange and calico ones chased each other on the floor, a weight shifted further up the sofa. Georgie said something indistinct about a mug she’d left in the kitchen as she walked away.

* * *

Georgie took a breath, looked into her mug, and drained it, grimacing at the gritty dregs of the hot cocoa mix left at the bottom.

What a day.

Jon was still kind of shocky after his nap. He wouldn’t talk much, not about anything (a warning sign, usually you couldn’t get him to _stop_ talking after something went wrong, not unless it was serious). He froze when Georgie got too near or moved too quickly, then relaxed slowly, deliberately, like he was reminding himself where he was and who was with him.

Sitting with the Admiral seemed to help, though. So did the kitten cam. It worked when his grandmother died and half his professors wouldn’t give him deadline extensions. She couldn’t get him to stop working and get some sleep, think about something that wasn’t death or guilt or professors who didn’t believe that sometimes people’s grandmothers actually died. But she could stream a kitten cam on her laptop.

It worked every time. Even if he didn’t fall asleep, or talk about stuff, he’d at least calm down a little. Kitten cams were good for that.

They were good for other things, too. On her bad days, Jon would clean up around her room, then curl into her side and they’d stream a kitten cam. It didn’t fix it, exactly, but watching something alive and new had made the bad days a little easier to cope with.

It worked even better once they had the Admiral. He’d jump on the keyboard and bat at the screen if the kittens in the stream got too close to the camera, or lean on whichever one of them was having a bad day and purr.

It was hard to run yourself into the ground or fade into nothing when you had a cat who wouldn’t let you. That didn’t change, no matter how much else had between then and now.

Like… everything that was going on with Jon right now, what the _fuck_.

She could see the edges of a bandage on his neck, when he wasn’t looking down (hiding it, or protecting it, she wasn’t sure which was worse). The bandage looked clean, as did the one on his hand. It definitely wasn’t Jon’s handiwork, there was no way he could have done it as neatly, especially not with his hands as messed up as they were. Someone had treated his injuries, so she wasn’t going to think about it.

No, really. She wasn’t.

She definitely wasn’t going to think about the kinds of things that left you with a bandaged neck and hand, and even more prone to flinching than before. Or whatever the hell he’d been up to for-

Five _days_ , how the _hell_ did you vanish for _five days?_ Anything could have happened to him, could still happen, if whatever left him looking like that followed him to her door.

But she wasn’t going to think about that now. She was going to put her mug in the sink, and sit down, and watch some adorable kittens with her friend who kept throwing himself into danger, and neither of them were going to think about this again until they’d both had some sleep and some space. Or maybe she’d make some more cocoa for them both, see if Jon would try to take it off her hands the way he usually did with anything chore-shaped. He could probably use the sugar, anyway.

* * *

When most of the kittens were asleep on the cat tree except for the orange one batting at the black and white tail above him, Jon cleared his throat. He winced at the motion, and hunched lower in his seat, tugging the collar of Georgie’s sweatshirt up to cover his neck. He seemed small in a way that hurt Georgie to look at.

“Hey. Jon?” said Georgie, turning to face him. Jon froze, and the Admiral climbed down over his shoulder and onto the cushion, staring at him until he put his legs down and the Admiral could lie across his lap. He shook his head tightly, and buried his good hand in the Admiral’s fur, smiling a little when he started purring.

Georgie put an arm out in invitation, and Jon gave a tiny nod. Georgie slowly closed the distance between them, settling her arm across Jon’s shoulders and pressing down a little the way he always used to like. Jon froze, then relaxed piece by piece until he’d melted sideways against Georgie. He was bony and warm, and still fit against her side the way she remembered.

Either Jon would tell her his stuff, or (more likely) he wouldn’t, but until then, there wasn’t much she could do. Rushing him had never worked before, and she doubted it would work now, no matter how much she wished he’d just _tell_ her, and-

And she was going to stop there, they’d been through that argument so many times since he showed up that she’d lost count after a while.

You can’t burn yourself out trying to make someone leave a situation that’s bad for them. But you can watch kitten cams, and try and get some equilibrium, and hope they'll choose something better for themself.

There would be time to talk about this tomorrow, assuming Georgie could get Jon to talk any more than the little he already had. But for now, there was the Admiral, and the sleeping kittens on her laptop, and that was enough.


End file.
